


Mash-ups and Jams

by 221b_hound



Series: Guitar Man [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Music, Musicians
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2017-11-06 12:20:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having written Gladstone's Collar in response to a prompt "John used to be in a band", I realised what was missing. John actually playing the guitar. Accompanied by Sherlock on the violin, if at all possible. So I promptly wrote this sequel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mash-ups and Jams

John didn’t know why he’d bothered to actually smuggle the guitar into the flat. It wasn’t as if Sherlock didn’t _know_. Still, Sherlock remained uncharacteristically reticent to point out that John was secretly playing in his room whenever Sherlock was out.

John was grateful for the respite because, really, that first week he was appalling. Fumbling the strings, his fingers sore, and the weight of the guitar across his thigh, in his hands, at once familiar and strange. The second week was… less awful. Very nearly competent.

On the nights that Sherlock was home, John would retire to his room and silently move through the chords and notes, a mute accompaniment to Sherlock’s violin that played John’s music downstairs.

There was nothing quite like hearing a song you’d written played by someone else, particularly someone _good_. His music didn’t sound that good coming out of his own mouth. Sherlock had adapted _Sharp_ for violin, although the original melody was augmented with insistent flourishes, raking dips and vibrato thrumming at the most unexpected, yet apt, places.

The piece was still sharp, and still _Sharp._ but someone else’s points and edges were added to his own. To this song for his sister. She’d never really forgiven him for it. And here was Sherlock, finding some other meaning in the grief, bewilderment and outrage he’d poured into it, after finding her in the tub with the razor blade and a name half written in her skin.

Harry was the extreme one, and she was pissed off with _him_ for writing a song about it? That had been near the end, part of what helped him to choose a new path. John decided to let Harry be the one with the scorched earth policy.  He’d find another way to deal with all the stuff in his head.

Sherlock had moved on from _Sharp_ to _Copper Beaches_ , then _Empty House_. John began to actually play the notes, discreetly accompanying the violin, and he tried to remember how it had felt to write songs. His blog wasn’t the same. He wasn’t trying to tell secrets with that, like he had with the songs. It was more like writing medical or field reports, though he allowed himself the freedom of more personal observations. He was good at those. Clear, succinct, all the secrets unspoken.

Song writing had been very different. That was all about the undercurrent. He used to pour everything into the music, converting it into a kind of code. But it was all there - all the passion, the rage, the joy, the loss, all that intensity - for someone to see, if they’d known how to look. Most of them didn’t, but something in the songs spoke to their hearts anyway.

But you can’t be a doctor and a soldier and throw all of that feeling outside yourself. So at medical school and then in the army, John learned to turn it inward, absorbed by his bones and his blood. He learned control, to be calm and still with all the turmoil. Instead, all of that intensity came out in his rock steady hands, whether they held a scalpel or a gun. (Oh, the terror when his hand wouldn’t stop shaking, because it meant the control was gone, or so he’d thought.)

For the most part, John was satisfied with the trade-off. He felt less vulnerable, less exposed. Less of a target for Harry’s rage, or their father’s, or the world’s in general. The greater the storm outside, the calmer he was. That worked for him now.

It wasn’t just the band that had inured John to living with Sherlock. Sherlock was, truth be told, a bit of a doddle compared to the first twenty years of John’s life.

The violin had stopped, so John wasn’t the least bit surprised when his door opened and Sherlock, still holding the instrument, looked in. Sherlock was still in his dressing gown, the violin hanging from one hand, the bow held upright, resting against his cheek as his flatmate considered him critically.

“That song,” he said, “ _Sharp._ I thought it was about you at first. But it’s about Harry, isn’t it?”

“Her and me both, I guess.”

“She did something stupid. It made you angry. Not just angry. Frightened.”

“Frightened and then angry,” John said, “And pretty confused.”

“Not a suicide attempt… but something drastic.”

“Harry’s always been a drastic kind of personality.”

Sherlock digested this, then poked John in the chest with the bow. “

“Do you know why I like your songs, John?”

“I haven’t the foggiest idea. I did wonder.”

“I can read you like every thought is inked on your forehead.”

“Terrific start. Thanks.”

“But I did not read this. I can read every moment of now, but I can’t extrapolate it forward or backward. I can’t tell what’s behind you, or ahead. You… defy extrapolation.”

“Aaaah…” Compliment or not? “Okay.”

“Your songs are clues to what lies between John-then and John-now. I can deduce some of what’s in between, but not everything. That’s… interesting.”

“Not bored yet, then?”

A flash of that rare, genuine smile. “Oh, far from it.”

Sherlock lifted the violin, then the bow, and played the opening note of ‘Empty House’. “”Come on then,” he said impatiently.

John fitted his hands to the strings of his guitar and began to play.

He didn’t feel quite ready to start singing yet.

***

Another week and impromptu rehearsals became commonplace. If there’s one thing that motivates a rusty performer, it’s playing with someone who is actually very, very good. John practised in every free moment because he wanted to keep up with the extraordinary sound that made his music more beautiful than it deserved to be.

He even started singing again, hesitantly. It had been a very long time, and he didn’t trust his voice in front of other people. Finally, falteringly, he began to sing while he and Sherlock were actually playing, too softly to compete with the instruments. Sherlock would raise an eyebrow but say nothing, and on they went. That exquisite classical violin and John’s raw guitar and even rawer voice.

And at the end of week three, John had an epiphany. He knew why he and Sherlock got along, even though nobody thought they would, or should.  He and Sherlock were different pieces of music. Different instruments, different disciplines. But the tempos matched. They shouldn’t go together, but they did, fitting in and complementing each other, highlighting and harmonising and pulling apart then together again. Sherlock and John were the unlikely mash-up that somehow worked to create something new.

That’s why he had loved music, John remembered. It made something larger out of bits of metal and wood and string and drumskins and voices. It made things belong together when they shouldn’t.

***

Week four was something different.

Sherlock burst into the flat on Wednesday evening, threw John’s coat at him, then the guitar in its case, while he gathered up the violin.

“And we are going… where, exactly?”

“Case. Undercover. Now. Come on!” The last as he pushed John ahead of him down the stairs.

Twenty minutes later they were in a pub bearing an ominous sign on its chalkboard: Open Mic Night.

Sherlock had already put their names on the list. Not as Gladstone’s Collar, thank god, but John wasn’t convinced that Genius and Friend was much of an improvement.

“I was in a hurry,” said Sherlock, not looking at him.

“That is the crappest band name in the history of band names, Sherlock.”

“Hardly. And it’s still better than Thatcher’s Armpit.”

“We never actually called ourselves Thatcher’s Armpit, you know.”

“Shhh.”

Sherlock raked the room with his gaze, fired off three rapid texts, and shoved John towards the stage. “We need to stall. Time to play.”

And the next thing he knew, John was on stage, adjusting the mic stand, the leads, his guitar strap; soundchecking and looking at the cynical expressions of the crowd, thinking fondly of being shot at while on enemy soil, because at least then he was allowed to shoot back.

Sherlock raised his violin and looked to John. “ _Sharp_ , then _Beaches_ , then _House_. Don’t forget to sing.”

“Sherlock!” he protested. He wasn’t ready for this. Not by a long chalk.

“We’re on a case,” Sherlock hissed back, and he drew out the first long, gorgeous note.

The thing is, when on a stage, with a mic and an uncertain reception, John had learned at the age of 17 that the best thing was to just throw himself into it. Into the guitar, the moment, the microphone and just belt it out, hurling himself past the notes he missed. What he lacked in polish, he’d learned, he could make up for with courage and sincerity.

It helped that beside him was music that made him raise the bar. He wanted to be good enough to be heard alongside that mad bastard with the violin.

Turned out, he was. Or near enough. Without a drummer for the beat, he kept pace with Sherlock’s impeccable timing. His fingers remembered tricks his conscious mind had long forgotten, though he left the fancy work mainly to the violin. He nearly forgot what he was doing when the baritone voice joined him in the first chorus with an unexpected harmony, but he recovered and continued.

And, damn, if they weren’t _good_. Not great. Not enough rehearsal for great. But good. Right, somehow. They’d made something larger than two men and two stringed instruments. Two and two equals eight beats to the bar and coded meanings and alchemy and infinite possibility.

Nevertheless, John wished afterwards that he’d known Lestrade would be there. Well, Lestrade was fine, really. Fine. It was Donovan he could have done without. And Anderson, particularly. Especially as Anderson had done his own two plus two and come up with: “Jesus, that was _you_ in Gladstone’s Collar back in the day?”

“No,” deadpanned John, “That was my evil twin. Don’t we have villains to arrest or something?”

“All done,” grinned Lestrade, “Just before your set. The uniforms took ‘em back for processing.”

“Before the…?” John eyed a too-innocent Sherlock. “Stalling for time, eh?”

Sherlock raised an eyebrow, then he grinned like he was lit up from inside. “I wanted to hear you sing. You wouldn’t do it properly at the flat. But you are excellent at responding appropriately to a crisis.”

John blinked. Raked his fingers through his hair. Sighed. Then started laughing.

“Next time” he said, “We’re calling ourselves Doctor and Friend.”

“No,” said Sherlock, eyes alight, and John could tell that this experiment was not nearly over, “Next time we’re calling ourselves 221b.”

And John decided it was fair game experiment right back, because it was entirely likely that he had the opening notes of a new song already, and a falsetto counter-melody he was looking forward to foisting on the most magnificently insufferable man he had ever had the joy to know.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Mash-ups and Jams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2230707) by [the_kings_daughter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_kings_daughter/pseuds/the_kings_daughter)




End file.
